Penswell and Red Tree House

Penswell and Red Tree House is a house, originally a farmhouse and adjoining schoolroom, dating to around the early 16th century. The hall was floored in the late 16th or early 17th century, with a later wing added at the lower end. The house is built of rendered and colourwashed stone rubble with an asbestos slate roof and gable ends. It originally comprised three rooms and a through passage, with an open hall that was later floored and had a lateral hall stack inserted at the front. An unheated inner room remains. There's a small stack at the rear of the lower end, and a stone turret at the rear of the hall. A later gabled wing, at right angles to the front of the lower end, was used as a schoolroom and is now part of Red Tree House. The windows are largely 20th century, including a large French window to the right of the hall, with slate hanging above. A lateral stone stack is centrally located, and a through passage door is positioned to the left, with a 20th-century glazed porch. A gabled stair turret is at the rear of the hall, along with later rear outshuts, and a wing projecting at right angles to the lower end, featuring large 20th-century windows in the gable end. Inside, the rough chamfered hall ceiling beam has a scroll stop. The hall is mainly ceiled, but two chamfered joists are reinforced with scroll stops. The lateral hall fireplace has a chamfered slate lintel with straight cut stops and stone rubble jambs. A plastered partition divides the inner room. Newel stairs are located at the rear of the higher end of the hall, with renewed stairs, and at the head of the stairs is a pair of chamfered doorways with carpenters mitres. The roof trusses over the hall and inner room have side-pegged lap-jointed apices and collars. Over the lower end, one truss and several others are smoke-blackened, with morticed apices and collars, side-pegged, and threaded purlins. The house has been subdivided; Penswell occupies the hall and higher end, and Red Tree House occupies the lower end and the former schoolroom wing.